You are a middle school counselor starting a new group aimed at enhancing self- concept in students. You work at a large urban school with a culturally and linguistically diverse population of students. You have heard about the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI), but you're not sure if it's the appropriate instrument to use.

Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI)

Description:

The Coopersmith SEI (Coopersmith, 1981) measures evaluative attitudes toward the self in social, academic, family, and personal areas of experience. Coopersmith defined self- esteem as a judgment of worthiness that is expressed by the attitudes an individual holds toward his or her self. Coopersmith believes thatself-esteem is significantly associated with effectivefunctioning, such as school performance.

Each questionnaire presents respondents with generally favorable or generally unfavorable statements about the self, which they indicate as Like Me or Unlike Me. The School Form is a 50-item inventory designed for 8- to 15-year-old children. It provides a Total Self Score as well as scores on four subscales: General Self (Gen), Social Self/Peers (Soc), Home/Parents (H), andSchool/Academic (Sch). The School Form is accompanied by aneight-item Lie Scale to assess defensiveness. The School Short Form is comprised of 25 items from the School Form. The Adult Form is an adaptation of the School Short Form for individuals over 15 years of age.

Administration time rarely exceeds 10 minutes. The instrument can be hand scored in a few minutes via scoring keys.

For interpretation, high scores correspond to highself-esteem. A high Lie Scale score suggests defensiveness(indicates that the test taker attempted to respond positively to all items).

Technical Information

Norm group: The SEI was administered to 643 public school children in grades 3 through 8. The sample consisted primarily of students from the lower and middle upper socioeconomic ranges. The test manual stated "a considerable number of Spanish surnamed and Black children were included in the sample." The manual strongly recommends that users develop local norm groups.

Reliability

Test-retest: The test-retest reliability coefficient after a5-week interval (with a sample of 30 fifth graders) was .88.Test-retest reliability after a three-year interval (with a sample of 56 public school children) was .70.

Internal consistency: Studies reported KR20 coefficients ranging from .87 to .92 on scores for school children in grades 4 to 8.

Alternate forms: A study comparing the SEI to a Canadian version of the test (using a sample of 198 children in third through sixth grades) found correlation coefficients ranging from .71 to .80.

Validity

Content validity evidence: Most of the items on the SEI School Form were adapted from scale items used by Rogers and Dymond(1954) in their classic study of nondirective psychotherapy; several original items were also included. All of the statements were worded for use with children aged 8 to 10. Five psychologists sorted the items into two groups: those indicative of highself-esteem and those indicative of low self-esteem.

Items that seemed repetitious or ambiguous or about which there was disagreement were eliminated.

Examining Instrument Validity and Reliability

Concurrent validity evidence: SEI scores correlated with the SRA Achievement Series and the Lorge Thorndike Intelligence Test at .33 and .30, respectively.

Predictive validity evidence: Reading Gifted Evaluation Scale(a measure of reading achievement) scores correlated with the SEI General Self subscale and the Lie Scale scores at .35 and .39, respectively.

Convergent validity Evidence: Correlation between SEI scores and the California Psychological Inventory Self-Acceptance Scale was .45.

Subscale intercorrelations (internal structure):

	General Self	Social Self-Peers	Home-Parents	School- Academic	Lie Scale
General Self	-	.49	.52	.42	-.02
Social Self-Peers		-	.28	.29	-.09
Home-Parents			-	.45	-.04
School- Academic				-	-.12

For which populations would this assessment be appropriate?

Examine the reliability data and determine if this information supports the use of this assessment.

Examine the content validity evidence for the assessment and determine if this information supports the use of this assessment.

Examine the concurrent, predictive, and convergent validity evidence and determine if this information supports the use of the SEI.